AN: Hope it hasn't been too long since I've update! Only a week, right? I am trying to write longer chapters because people seem to like that... Authors that I read are always apologizing for short chapters but some of those tend to be longer than my longest chapter. Do I not write enough? If so, please tell me! This one is going to be, you could say, fragmented, meaning it will have snapshots of Harry's first year, so I can get on to his summer in the next chapter :)
Harry Potter and the Second Skating Lesson
The next time that Harry saw Draco was on the roller rink just next to Hogwarts that had been refinished that summer and glinted in the sun, causing some of the girls to squeal when the light hit their eyes. Madam Hooch strode to the center of the rink and sighed at the motley assemblage of first years before her. Most of them sat on the rink, sliding their feet back in forth in their skates, but a select group of Slytherins plus Harry stood proudly at the end of the line with their own skates already laced up.
Hooch knew these kids: future Death Eaters. They even had the black skates with silver laces already. She instructed them to help the other students with their skates as she too knelt down and started tying laces. Parkinson groaned and whine about having to "touch Gryffindors. They have germs."
Harry skated over to Hermione and tightened her laces for her as she watched with frustration. "I read up on roller skating over the summer, but I could not understand the mechanics of these skates. We don't have many rinks like this where I live."
Ron rolled her eyes at her excuses and managed to stand up on his own, explaining, "My brothers are on the Gryffindor Roller Derby Team. Basically my whole family skates. Besides, you saw me on the train."
Harry laughed at the fond memory and moved onto a black-haired Ravenclaw who hid her face as she blushed in embarrassment at her lack of skill, but he did not take note and was quickly kneeling before the next person, tying up laces twice as fast as the Death Eaters combined.
Satisfied, Hooch skated back and forth in front of the students, many of whom were still sitting down. "Now, on your own, or if you need it, the help of a friend, stand up!" Harry rolled his skates around in place but dared not move out of line as people grabbed at his sleeves to gain some purchase. Hermione managed to get up and gave her two pseudo-friends a smile that they returned.
In the background was a long length of rink only about two yards wide but at least a kilometer long. Harry eyed it with impatience and nodded his head at it so that Draco could see it too. "Race ya, Potter?"
"You wish," Harry whispered back. I wish.
Madam Hooch caught them talking and gave them a glare, staring daggers as sharp as her tufts of hair. She tended to a squirrely group on the end who kept falling, almost in amusement, every time she stood them up. One of them, who was most certainly giving it his best effort, Neville Longbottom, fell on his bum and screamed out in pain, moaning about his tail bone.
The teacher rolled her eyes but bit her lip to compose herself to keep from screeching like a merperson.
"I need Madam Pomfrey," Neville cried.
"Class? Stay here! I must take Mr. Longbottom to the nurse's ward." She scooped him up in her strong arms and skated away, happy for the escape even under the circumstances.
Then Draco was off, yelling, "Let's go, Harry!" The other Death Eaters started to move towards them, but Crabbe and Goyle fell down and Draco turned around to motion for them to stay put.
Hermione pouted her lips in dislike of Draco's idea, but Harry shrugged at her and sped out to accept Draco's outstretched hand. Any excuse to hold hands with the young Adonis was worth making.
The two boys picked up speed, pushing off in time, right feet, left feet, until Draco asked, "Ready?" and flung Harry out straight on the expanse of flat rink that stretched out for a kilometer.
The younger boy spread out his arms and spun in circles, digging down his heel to increase his rotation.
"I missed this," Draco said with his eyes to the sky. "Ready to race?"
Harry nodded, lost for words as the sun hit Draco at every angle, highlighting his best features: all of them.
They set their toes on the same invisible line and took the same pose with one leg back and an arm held behind them in preparation. Blaise screamed, "Go," from the sideline and they were off! Draco smiled at Harry as they started off in sync with each other before Harry took advantage of his friend's concern and pushed off ahead of him. Draco lowered his center of gravity and started off again, unable, though, to catch up to Harry who was ten meters ahead. Whereas racing before had just been about him and Draco, this time, Harry risked his parent's reputation, and he knew that his friend would still hang around him even if he lost. Which he did.
Harry passed the finish line in a frenzy of shouting from Gryffindors and foreign expletives from the rest of the Death Eaters who did not understand why Draco wrapped Harry in a hug once he finished too. With his glasses barely hanging on, Harry reached his arms around Draco and let his eyes close even though he knew that the other boy was just high on endorphins.
But something interrupted their happiness: an "Ahem."
The boys detached to wheel around and face a narrow-eyed McGonagal who was tapping her foot with tartan robes. "Boys?"
"Hello, Professor."
She closed her eyes and pursed her lips. "Come with me. The rest of you-" she waved her hands at the rest of the class "-need to wait here for Madam Hooch who has informed me via patronus that she is returning from the hospital ward."
The trio left the rest of the class muttering about what a Patronus was. McGonagal hustled to keep up with the boys who skated languidly at her sides with no idea where they were going. They passed a charms classroom that the professor ducked into to request the presence of a Marcus Flint and Oliver Wood. Draco whispered to Harry that those boys were the Roller Derby captains of their houses. McGonagal raised an eyebrow at him before leading them into an empty classroom to wait.
The boys sat down at the table in front of the teacher's desk where McGonagal sat with their feet rolling back and forth on the stone floor. The captains entered the room with their eyes on each other like drawn fists, but they toned down the glaring as McGonagal addressed them, "Marcus, Oliver, are either of your teams in need of a jammer?"
"Naw, Professor, I've got Higgs," Marcus drawled before being dismissed.
"I do not, Professor. We lost Charlie Weasley last year." Oliver informed her.
"Draco, you may return to class," the professor instructed him. "But Harry... stay here." She raised her thin eyebrows and waited for Draco to give Harry a pat on the back and skate out of the class. "Wood, I have found you a new jammer. Potter's the fastest skater I've seen in a while, and judging by his last name, he has a lot of potential."
Wood walked around to the front of the desk and squatted down to get a good look at Harry. "Oi! Potter! Merlin's beard! You wanna skate for the team?"
Harry detected a Scottish accent in the cute boy but shook his head to clear it out thoughts of what the boy looked like under those robes. "Sure!"
Oliver Wood looked to their Head of House for confirmation and then gave the young boy a handshake. "Welcome to the team."
"Eh, Harry," Draco whispered to his friend in passing in the hallway, "meet me after dinner to come to a party tonight."
Before Harry could respond, his friend was gone.
Dinner passed like charms class with even more bickering from Ron and Hermione who were still divided over whether or not Harry should skate for the team. Harry tuned them out because he already knew that Ron would say Harry was even faster than his older brother Charlie and Hermione would say that he should focus on his classes instead of skating, a stupid sport to begin with.
"Are you 'earing this, Harry?" Ron demanded with a knife in his hand, supposedly to cut his chicken.
Harry would have responded more fully but right as Ron spoke, a large group of Slytherins left their seats and trailed out of the Hall, so he muttered, "I'll be fine. I'm tired, though, see you later."
Hermione yelled something after him to rest up for the game tomorrow, but he barely heard it as laughs about unforgivable curses and hexes assualted his ears from the Slytherin entourage. Draco spotted him and pulled him closer to the center to disguise him as they descended into the depths of the dungeons, far away from the potions classroom. A seventh year muttered the password and a stone wall slid apart to reveal a gloomy castle with dusty mirrors and a blue fire already flickering in the fireplace. Draco grabbed Harry by the arm and led him down the stairs where some other students were already gathered, most of them on his father's roller derby team. They passed around a bottle of firewhiskey along with bottles of butterbeer that foamed over once opened, but Harry declined it all which led to exclamations about his first match tomorrow.
"Pity the Slytherin team didn't have room," Pansy, the only person who had objected to Harry's attendance, moaned with a hand playing with Draco's hair as she lay on top of his bed while he sat on the floor.
"Yeah, you would've been selected, Draco," Harry added as if agreeing with Pansy might make the girl detest him a little bit less.
Draco shrugged and redirected the conversation away from himself and towards the incompetence of Professor Flitwick. He slid around the room to be closer to Harry and pressed his nose to the other boy's cheek. "Good luck tomorrow. I hope you beat us. We don't deserve to-"
His encouragement was interrupted by screaming upstairs and a scrambling within the room to hide under beds and blankets as shouts of "Teacher" floated up from the common room. Both Harry and Draco dove under the covers and pressed up against each other to appear as one body. Draco muttered, "Nox," and all of the candles flickered out in the room. Whoever the teacher was, someone with a lighter voice then Snape, trudged down the stairs and stopped at the first year's landing. He muttered, "Trust the first years to behave themselves and then continued back up to the common room to discipline the rule-breakers there. All of the kids cast lumos and Millicent went around with a match to relight the candles as they all emerged from their hiding places.
"Who was that?" Harry asked.
Zabini curled his lip and snarled, "Filch. The filthy squib of Hogwarts." All of the Slytherins smirked at Blaise's pure-blood prejudice, but not many smiles crossed their lips after that. Goyle collected all the empty bottles and tossed them under his bed which was collecting quite a pile of trash. Other than a few remarks about the weather, the conversation died. Filch had killed the mood. Harry took one last look at Draco before venturing out of the room to check at the top of the stairs to make sure Filch was gone and then sprint back to the Hogwarts common room with minutes to spare, cutting it so close that Ron was already in bed when he got back.
The day of the match, Harry was about to follow the rest of the team into their locker rooms when someone tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, "Good luck" before walking away. Harry watched Draco's blond head go away as he stepped inside. Katie was already lacing up her skates with the guys, so Harry dropped his bag next to her and sat down on the bench to put on his skates.
She raised an eyebrow at him as he double knotted his laces. "When d'ya get those skates, Harry?"
Harry looked back at the girl with the big eyes and jet black hair. "A friend gave 'em to me this summer."
"You'll be wanting some new ones."
"Um, I guess-"
"Katie, stop bugging him. Your skate's are fine, Harry. Now let's beat some Slytherins!"
The twins started a raucous cheer, but Angelina and Alicia came back from the bathroom to quiet them down and whisk Katie away as Oliver led them out to the rink. The gingers bemoaned their fate one last time before lining up with one on the rink and another on the bench with Katie, "Nothing rhymes with Gryffindor!" The crowd adapted into a chant carried more than the quarter of the arena occupied by Gryffindors.
Harry eyed the opposing jammer and attempted to offer him up a smile, but he merely stared back with the blank face of concentration. The gun went off and his team started pushing him ahead while skating in front of the other jammer to let him get ahead. The Slytherins closde in on Harry, but all of them combined are slower than Draco and nowhere near as good looking, so he kicked it into high gear and rounedd the first two corners in seconds before using the straightaway as extra charge. The last two corners came as easy as riding a hyppogriff, and soon he is crossing the line to set himself as the lead jammer.
The other jammer escaped the Gryffindor posse and attempted to retake Harry even as the boy racked up points with each lap, evading the Slytherin hoodlums with natural ease. One time when lapping the other jammer, Harry heard Oliver shout to him, "Make your parents proud" before sliding in front of the other jammer and even turning around to skate backwards in a sort of intimidation move.
With each lap, the crowd got louder until Harry could not distinguish between boos and hisses and shouts of jubilation. The score climbed up and up to Harry's surprise (Wood had told him that most scores are very close and it comes down to the last seconds). As the allotted thirty minutes wound down, it seemed that the Slytherins lost steam even though they had been practicing for hours at a time while Harry had only had one practice beforehand that barely lasted an hour and entailed even less skating time.
When the buzzer rang, the youngest jammer Hogwarts had seen in years barely heard it over the shouting and did not know that the match had ended until his team was criss-crossing across the rink to congratulate him on an amazing win! Slytherin did not even bother to shake hands with the victors before storming off and leaving the Gryffindors to hoist Harry up above their heads where he could see the only Slytherin in the arena who was smiling: Draco.